


Bad case of URT

by vivaldis_lover



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Humor, Love Confession, M/M, Mutual Pining, They can't deal wth their own feelings, This was written for the sake of fun alone, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-06-18 22:23:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15495993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vivaldis_lover/pseuds/vivaldis_lover
Summary: Shiro loves Keith, Keith loves Shiro, neither of them knows about the other's feelings, the team can't deal with them anymore and Lance needs a break.





	Bad case of URT

**Author's Note:**

> Welp, I hope this makes you laugh a little. I know at least I had fun writing it. I don't have a beta and english is not my first language, so if you correct any mistake, I will actually appreciate that :)  
> Leave kudos and comments if you enjoy this!

Space is silent and dark and fascinating, but even too much of it can get boring. And travelling through the galaxy day after day, with no possibility of wormhole-ing your way to Earth, could be really challenging. Especially when you were travelling with the guy who had told you – _you_ loosely speaking – _“I love you”_ a few days before and was now acting like nothing happened.

Shiro was with Keith in the Black Lion, in a back seat that the lion had whipped out for the occasion. It made sense, of course. Keith wouldn’t have let him get too far, now after all the trouble of getting him back. Shiro would have been happy to spend time with Keith, but at the moment sharing his space with Slav would have been less nerve-wrecking.

Did Keith know that he still had the clone’s memories?

_“Shiro, please… You’re my brother. I love you.”_

In the span of twelve seconds Keith had made a love confession and bro-zoned him, and Shiro had no idea what to think about that. The only way to know was to talk to Keith and clarify a few things. So he did what _any_ mature adult would have done in the same situation: he avoided the subject like the plague.

Surprisingly, it did not make the atmosphere in the cockpit any better. _“You fought almost to the death against my clone gone rouge and were ready to die with me”_ is not a subject as easy to avoid as _“that time when I spilled coffee on your favorite shirt”_.

“So…” said Keith. “You died.”

At least Keith’s social skills were still as divine as before he left.

“More or less,” he replied.

“That sucks.”

“Yeah.”

Shiro knew there was more going on in Keith’s head than _that sucks_ , but he also knew that in Keith’s dictionary “ _dealing with an emotion_ ” was synonym of “ _repressing it_ ”.

He still didn’t mention the _I love you_. Was Keith ignoring it because he was convinced he didn’t remember it? Or because he didn’t mean what Shiro hoped he meant by it? Or was he, somehow, aware that Shiro remembered and was too embarrassed to talk about it?

It was like figuring out which cards had the other player in a game of Cluedo, but a wrong move could have as a consequence the emotional equivalent of being nuked.

“Hey, Keith?”

“Yeah?”

There was a moment of silence.

“Nothing.”

*

They were both blissfully unaware of how much their teammates hated spending time with them. Not that they had some kind of grudge against either Keith or Shiro, but the two of them together were just-

“-insufferable,” concluded Pidge, side-eyeing them.

At the start of their journey back home, taking breaks from piloting and seeing alien planets had been enjoyable, but it had slowly turned into a nightmare for Keith and Shiro’s teammates, as they had to witness them moping their way to Earth, painfully unable to talk about whatever issue they had with one another.

“I think I know what this is,” said Lance to Hunk and Pidge, careful not to be heard by Shiro.

An alien creature – the trio could not figure it out whether it was male or female, or even if that dichotomy applied to them – passed to offer them some more soup. They were lucky all the populations they had encountered so far had been friendly and eager to host them.

At the moment they were sitting around a bonfire in the center of the village they were staying in. Hunk glanced at Keith who, away from the group, was trying, and failing, to teach his space wolf how to fetch. Shiro was observing Keith too, with a sad and defeated expression on his face.

“Tell us,” said Pidge.

“It’s URT,” declared Lance, solemnly.

“UR what?” she asked.

Lance leaned forward with a knowing expression. Pidge and Hunk leaned forward too.

“Unresolved Romantic Tension.”

He didn’t get the reaction he was expecting. He didn’t get a reaction at all. Hunk sipped his soup, unimpressed.

“What? I’m right, you know it,” he protested.

Pidge fixed her glasses, looking skeptic. “You sure you know what you’re talking about?”

“Pidge, they’ve been pining so hard for each other, I’m starting to feel romantic tension between me and Kaltenecker. _Yes_ , I’m sure.”

The three of them looked at Shiro. At first they had been careful not to be heard, but they now realized that Shiro was too far gone into his own fantasy to hear anything but the wedding march playing in his head. He sighed like a medieval noblewoman waiting for her husband to come home from the war.

“Okay, _maybe_ he’s into him,” said Hunk.

“Wanna bet?” asked Lance. “One word, and I get up and make Shiro talk about his pathetic crush on mullet boy.”

Hunk put down his empty bowl. “At this point, I’m way too curious to know why they aren’t talking.”

Lance rubbed his hands together. “Here we go.”

He had no idea what he was getting into or how much he would have regretted getting involved. He took a step towards Shiro. Then another. And another one. He could not hear the universe tell him to back off for his own sanity.

He sat down next to Shiro.

“Hey, buddy,” he said, demonstrating his ability to start a conversation nonchalantly.

“Hey.” Shiro’s eyes were still fixed on Keith.

He realized he had absolutely no idea how to approach the subject, but, well, Hunk and Pidge were watching him, expecting him to fail, so he had to try his best.

“We never really talk, you and I, isn’t it? I mean,” he continued, hoping that Shiro was actually listening to him and not just making a list of the guests at his and Keith’s wedding in his head, “we’re teammates, but we spend so little time together.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” agreed Shiro and said nothing else.

Lance pretended to notice only in that moment that he was looking at Keith. “Seeing something that you like?” he asked with a smirk and Shiro’s brain imploded at the thought that someone might have noticed his extremely subtle pining over his friend.

He blurted out a half-baked explanation to why he was studying Keith’s backside so intensely and gave up halfway, looking dejected.

“Is it that obvious?” he asked, meekly.

Lance decided to lie. “No, don’t worry. I’m just really intuitive, when it comes to this stuff.”

They looked at each other in silence for a few seconds.

“It’s _that_ obvious.”

“Yeah, sorry. I didn’t want you to feel bad.”

Shiro rubbed his eyes, conflicted. On one hand, he would have liked to talk about the feelings that were slowly killing him. On the other hand…

“Not a word with Keith. _Are we clear_?”

Lance looked into his eyes and knew that Shiro would have killed him with his bare hands, if he had said _anything_ about his feelings to Keith. He slowly nodded.

“Clear.”

Shiro seemed to relax a bit and Lance scooted closer to him.

“So,” he said. “How did it start?”

So Shiro started talking… and never stopped. From when he and Keith met, to the fight in the clone factory, he told Lance everything about them and every interaction, the moment when he had realized Keith’s potential as a pilot, their goodbye before the Kerberos mission, when Keith had told him that he had changed his life… Lance was tempted to just zone out and spare his ears from melting under the constant attack of Shiro’s voice.

“Wait, wait, wait,” said Lance, interrupting his friend. “Keith told you that he _loves_ you?”

“Yes.”

Lance stared into those dark, beautiful and oblivious eyes, still unsure whether he had heard right or not.

“And so what’s the problem?” he asked. “Why are you two not making out passionately in the Balck Lion and looking at the stars together?”

Shiro pouted. “He also told me that I’m his brother. So, yeah, whatever he meant with that _I love you_ , it was certainly not romantic,” he said bitterly.

Lance tried not to scream. “Shiro. Have you taken into consideration that maybe Keith said that to emphasize how important you are to him? And not because he sees you as a _literal brother_?”

Shiro frowned. “No.”

Lance took a deep breath. “Okay. Good to know.”

Okay, he was not an expert when it came to romance between two men, but he assumed the dynamic was not _terribly_ different? Keith telling Shiro that he would have saved him no matter what in a dimly lit bedroom – Shiro had described the scene in every detail – was something out of a romance novel, the kind that Lance had read as a younger teen and would never admit to anyone to have done so.

“He’s just…” Shiro sighed. “He’s so perfect, smart and capable. And look at his hair, so soft and beautiful.”

They both looked at Keith and saw him getting body slammed by the space wolf.

“And graceful,” added Shiro, only slightly less assured.

Lance turned his head toward Pidge and Hunk, and in his eyes his friend only saw a bottomless pit of despair. He had managed to make Shiro admit his crush but, God, at what cost?

*

Later that evening, Lance approached Krolia.

“I know why you are not travelling in the black lion anymore,” he said.

She just hugged him and didn’t say a word.

*

Different planet, different population, same depressing scene. This time it was Keith’s turn to observe from afar his love interest, who was currently absorbed in a deep conversation with Coran about the possibility of building an altean prosthetic for him. They were having dinner in a room that strongly resembled an earth ballroom with their hosts, who were clearly happy to have the Paladins of Voltron with them.

For the first time since he had made Shiro talk about his feelings for Keith, Lance was free from his friend’s endless ramblings.

“I have never been less happy to have won a bet,” he said to his plate.

Pidge winced. “I’m sorry for you.”

They heard Keith heavily sigh. He was a few seats away from them, his head resting in his hand, the other mindlessly stroking his wolf, longing for someone he actually could easily get, honestly. He just didn’t know it. Pidge and Hunk watched him casually turn over the food in his plate, too lost in his own thoughts and fantasies to care about feeding himself. Then they turned to Lance.

“Don’t look at me,” said Lance. “I’m done trying to help these pining idiots.”

Lance had done his best to keep from Hunk and Pidge Keith’s love confession, because he didn’t trust either of them to not immediately run to Keith and spill everything, telling him about Shiro’s feelings. Especially Hunk. And he was absolutely terrified by Shiro’s threats.

Hunk took a deep breath and stood up. “I’m doing it.”

Lance grabbed his hand before he could go. “You are a hero,” he said, his eyes full of tears.

“I know,” replied Hunk.

He quickly thought about a way to start a conversation, grabbed a plate and walked over to Keith’s table. He let himself fall in the seat next to Keith, startling him.

“Oh. Hi, Hunk.”

“Try to be happy to see me, will you?” he said.

“Sorry, I was thinking about something.”

Hunk hummed, making himself comfortable in his seat.

“Wanna try this?” he asked, pointing at the food in the plate he had brought with him.

Keith looked at the food, unsure. “I’m… I’m not really hungry,” he mumbled and brought a glass to his lips.

Hunk quickly debated with himself whether or not to make the joke and decided that he really didn’t have anything to lose.

“Yeah,” he said, looking at Shiro. “Seems like you’re already busy eating something else with your eyes.”

Keith nearly choked on his drink.

“Hunk!”

Hunk chuckled. “Buddy, it’s okay! Nothing to be ashamed of. It’s just… really obvious.”

Keith looked at him wide-eyed, then sighed, put his glass on the table and crossed his arms. “ _That_ obvious, huh?”

“ _That_ obvious. How do you survive every trip?” asked Hunk, honestly curious. If Keith's level of thirst was that high, he needed to know how well he was coping.

“Barely,” admitted Keith.

“So,” said Hunk. “What’s stopping you from telling him about how you feel?”

Keith took a deep breath. “Well, I...” he paused. “I might have already told him.”

It was Hunk’s turn to almost choke. “Wait, _what_? How, when did this happen?”

Keith hid his face in his hands. “While we were fighting in the clone factory. I might have let slipped that I love him, as I was trying to avoid being killed.”

Hunk stopped functioning for a few seconds.

“And then what happened?” he finally asked, recovering from the shock.

“Nothing,” replied Keith, in a depressed tone. “So he either doesn’t remember or…” He paused. “Or he acts like nothing happened because he doesn’t return my feelings and he doesn’t want to hurt me”

Hunk opened his mouth to speak, then rethought his intentions. He raised his hands, defeated.

“You know what? No, I’m not gonna get involved in this. Nope. You two sort this out. I’m out.”

*

It had been a couple of days since that weird conversation with Hunk, that had ended as suddenly as it had started. Keith kept thinking about it, but whenever he‘d tried to confront Hunk, he would straight up refuse to listen.

He heard Shiro move in the backseat.

“Keith?”

“Yeah?”

Shiro paused. “Never mind…”

“ _Oh my God.”_

Shiro jolted at the sound of Keith’s exasperated voice. His friend put on the autopilot, shoot out of his seat and turned around, putting his hands on each side of Shiro’s head, towering over him.

“Tell me,” he ordered.

“What?”

“It’s the ninth time today, that you call my name, clearly because you want to tell me something, and then say _nothing_ ,” he growled. “And I’ve lost count of how many times you have done it during our journey.”

Shiro swallowed.

“What. Do you. Want?” asked Keith’s, his voice a low growl.

Shiro stared into his friend’s eyes for a few seconds, then weakly said:

“I… love you too?”

Keith’s face froze in confusion, then he started to slowly realize exactly _why_ Shiro had said that.

“Oh,” he whispered, as he backed away. “ _Oh._ ”

What followed was a short silence, the most awkward since the start of the journey, which should have been impossible, given that the level of awkwardness in the cockpit had already been over the levels of human tolerance during the whole trip.

“ _You remember_ ,” whispered Keith.

Shiro scratched his head. “I didn’t know how to tell you.”

Keith closed his eyes for a moment, took a deep breath and a moment later he was again hunched over Shiro, their foreheads almost touching.

“I could kill you right now,” he said.

“But you won’t,” replied Shiro.

Keith smirked. “No. No, I think I’m going to kiss you.”


End file.
